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Water Insecurity, A Crisis Ahead

100 years ago, planet earth was occupied by 1.5 billion people, today it’s crowded by 7 billion humans, all dependant on the finite resources that compliment our planet. Hold that thought; the same planet earth has one-third of it’s land mass under desert and the rates of desertification are growing fast. In Africa, the Sahara is reported to be increasing by up to 50 kilometers/30 miles a year, chewing up the Congo forest like nonsense and the Kalahari is also growing fast towards north and if these two deserts meet, we are doomed.

The primary cause of this of course is logging and real estate development into the forests and it is very evident in Kenya where hectares of indigenous forest lands have been converted into real estate and other commercial activities.

Kenya receives substantial amounts of rain well-distributed across the country but we barely harvest this precious commodity. The government’s agriculture policy does not consider this important and allocate less than 2% of the budget to irrigation. Implementation of the government projects always remains an issue as witnessed in the heavy corruption in the whole government.

Energy is a main driver of the global economy and we are consuming it fast. The sad thing is that we are still dependant on non renewable energy yet we are fully aware of the impact on the environment. We also have several sources of renewable energy that could power up the planet but the big corporations would rather invest their money in something finite so as to push the prices up. It is basic economics; the lower the supply ceteris paribus, the higher the prices and this is very evident in crude oil prices which are consistently rising as global oil reserves decrease.

The worlds largest polluters USA and China are not really into emissions reduction claiming that it would hurt their competitiveness and claim jobs. This is very short-term thinking because in the long-term if we continue with this non renewable energy, there would be little or no resources for earth’s inhabitants everywhere on the continent and the main issue will be sustain life leave alone jobs…please share your comments below

One thought on “Water Insecurity, A Crisis Ahead”

We, Earthlings, are slowly killing ourselves with our greed for not bothering to plant trees to replace what we cut down. There was this movie supposedly in 2070 that has the military guarding water sources. It may happen sooner than that if governments have no tangible policies to address the crisis.

In Kenya, we always talk of water harvesting during the dry season but nobody really comes out to do so when rains pound the country like now. I fear for the future generations. For my part, I recently planted about twenty trees and I am at peace with nature.